Evaluation- Jodie Aviss-Smith

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

• ·         Titling- after watching many different examples of thriller openings, we decided to put our titling over the top of our footage rather than a blank screen so that the audience can still see what’s happening and see the credits at the same time. we had to position these in ‘dead space’ so that they weren't covering any of the sequence behind it.

•  Editing- instead of using a cut between each shot, we tried to get a fuzz effect like on old video cameras when you’re watching footage back and fast forward it you get the lines across the screen, that’s the effect we were trying to go for, we did this in final cut pro and was used several times throughout.

•  Sound- we didn’t have many non-diegetic sounds in our opening, nor a soundtrack. This is because our opening is ‘found footage’ therefore no extra sound would have been added into it. On garageband we found a chainsaw sound to use at the end, as the chainsaw we had was only a prop. On our final piece of titling at the end, we used a high pitched sound and fuzz sound that works in time with the movement of the title, the high pitched sound is eerie and creates suspense.

• Restricted and un restricted narration-  throughout or opening, all of the shots are un restricted as we find out what happens as soon as the characters do, except for this last shot. Chris is filming himself and just saying about their day and we can see over his shoulder that lee’s walking towards him with some sort of weapon. His clothing here helps too as he’s in black and his hood is up meaning he doesn’t want to be seen, and wants to hide his identity.

•  Antagonist and protagonist- the protagonist in our opening is Chris as he tries to stop his friends going into that bit of the woods as he finds a ‘no trespass’ sign and tries to very clearly stop them, and refers back to it at as they’re walking further through the woods. The antagonist in our opening, is Lee, as he’s the ‘Bag guy’ who kills people who trespass on his land, hence the ‘no trespassing’ sign. In one thriller opening that we watched which we got our inspiration from (a night in the woods) the protagonist is also the antagonist which is very clever, however we thought this would be quite confusing to convey and have a plot to, but none the less we still have both in out thriller opening. 

• Mise en scene- in our opening, the characters were to stumble upon another camp that had been deserted. We bought 2 tents with us and lots of rubbish from typical things that you’d take camping with you. For any scene in any film everything in the shot is there for a reason, and because we had £0 budget, we had to make do with what we could and make the best of our surroundings. We found an open area next to a load of trees so that we could follow our plot of stumbling across a deserted camp and someone thinking they see something move like a person in the distance.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• ·        The first shot is of Chris who is one of three in this group of friends. Because he has the camera and is doing all the filming, you’d think he was the ‘leader’ of the friendship group and the others would be less in control and following what Chris does. However as stated before, Chris is the protagonist and tries to stop them going any further into the woods. Jack and Joe are the ones who appear to be ‘in control’ and they then persuade Chris that it’s not important, as it’s just on the floor and if it was important it would be somewhere noticeable. Chris is persuaded to ignore it and to carry on but throughout he references back to the no trespassing sign. It’s like a 2 against 1, where one person is outnumbered so they go along with it against their will as it’s the majority decision.
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• ·        Another point where Jack and Joe are in control is when Chris asks if they know where they’re going and Joe and Jack say that they do, as if Chris doesn’t trust them, then Chris turns the camera on himself and says ‘They’ve no idea where they’re going’ as though he wouldn’t dare say it to their faces.
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• ·        None of their clothing is better than the others, they are all wearing similar things that you would go camping in. All the characters are supposed to be teenagers around the age they actually are, being adventurous and doing things that are different.
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•    We wanted to represent the characters this way because our opening is self-shot, therefore having to be realistic and conveying the characters to be this way too. They’re just 3 average teenage boys going on a camping trip. 

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

• ·        Cinema is probably one of the best forms of distribution as each person has to pay to go and see it, however with our budget of nothing, this definitely won’t be possible.
• ·        We could advertise our film for little amounts of money on twitter, YouTube, local newspapers, flyers, posters, however our target audience would be a big factor as to where we can advertise.
• ·        Filmdistribution are a British distributor of independent films in the UK and Ireland. They might release our product as its an independent film and set in the UK.
• Although as Filmdistribution isn’t as well known as other film distributors, another distributor could be film4 who are also UK based. 
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Who would be the audience for your media product?

·          I think the target audience for our media product is 18-35 because it wouldn’t be suitable for people under the age of 18 as there could be

o    very strong violence

• frequent strong and very strong language
• strong portrayals of sexual activity
• scenes of sexual violence
• strong horror
• strong blood and gore
• discriminatory language and behaviour
• I think this target audience age range is suitable because it could include all of the above, especially strong violence.
• As with the film we got our inspiration from, A Night In The Woods, their age rating is also 18, this film includes violence, portrayal of sexual activity and horror. This film is a horror film, but we liked the idea of it being hand held so we in cooperated it with the thriller genre as we think this works well.
•   The gender of our target audience isn’t just males or just females, although all the characters we see in the opening are male, this doesn’t mean to say that there is no females what so ever in the rest of the film, as stated in our synopses there are female characters. We used male characters in the opening as they’re seen as adventurous and do things that not many females would do, such as camping in woods. With this in account, of them being adventurous, this entices the audience of 18-35 year olds as they can relate to them. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

•    As said before, the audience is 18-35, but just because the rating is 18, doesn’t mean to say the characters have to be over that age. By using characters that appear to be around 17-18 this could attract the audience as they feel they can empathise with them. I think this close up of Chris is a good way for the audience to empathise with him because they can see his facial expressions as he’s saying how bad the days been so far, then his expression changes when he sees the Lee behind him in the camera.
•  Our narrative was also easy to follow and left the audience in suspense wondering who, what, where and why this was happening. 

What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

-looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

·         CONTINUITY. I think that was the biggest thing that as a group we learnt. It’s a massive factor in the flow of a film and in our preliminary task, it was shocking. Chris had a haircut, his costume changed, and the whole classroom we were in changed halfway through. We did know this as we filmed but there was nothing we could do, so in our final piece we planned ahead and made sure we did all our filming in one go

visual effects-instead of having just a cut between shots, we used a fuzz effect, this makes it more interesting and enticing. We had difficulty finding the specific effect we wanted but
when we did find one similar we then distorted it even more on final cut pro

• ·         We now all know how to use final cut pro and garageband!

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•    Variety of shots, close ups/point of view shots, and establishing shots

• ·         Our general communication- we organised a day where we would do all our filming in one go, we all actually turned up on time and we just got on with our filming and finished filming earlier than anticipated and even did lots of shots we didn’t use.

• ·         Sound- in our preliminary task, we had one soundtrack throughout the whole thing, the apprentice theme tune. (Chris was adamant we used it) and we had no sound effects in it at all, whereas in our final piece it was the other way round, we had sound effects but no sound track.

• ·         We’ve all improved a lot with our knowledge of garageband, final cut pro, and even simple things like using the video camera. Our thriller opening is definitely more successful than our preliminary task and we’ve all learnt a lot in the process.